Testing my redesigned home page, and when can we forget about Netscape 4.x?

[smorg]

Since I PREFER Netscape 4.x over IE, which continually crashes, no matter how many updates are done (in fact, it crashes more and more with each new update), and I know quite a few other people who have nothing but problems with IE, Netscape 4.x will be around for quite a while. No one is upgrading to Netscape 6 because it's so buggy. What do you expect with AOL owning it, then trying to sign a deal with Microsoft to bundle IE with their software?

I like the redesign of your site very much, but you might want to lighten the pic behind "petestack" or darken the text. You can barely read it.

[smorg]

Perfecto mundo, Pete! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Thanks, Erik. I don't get these kind of crashes at home. The computer that does has a new CD-Writer that has caused nothing but trouble since the owner installed it (missing audio driver, error message that files have moved and need to be fixed manually, etc., etc.), so I just plug along until they can fix it; they're out of town for the summer.

I'm getting a cable modem at home this week, so I'll only use this one for work.

[pduggan]

Hi folks

Been trying a redesigned home page:

http://www.petestack.com/testindex.html

It's valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, looks OK in IE 5.5, Opera 5 (except for the hyphen where there should be a dash) and Netscape 6 (except for the non-alignment of the 'What's New' animation and the heading opposite), but it's not at all pretty in Netscape 4.7!

What I wanted was to have the new graphic header and icon strip expanding to the same width as the text below as the window was enlarged, but the text to reformat to obviate horizontal scrolling in windows narrower than the heading image. I could have:

<ul>[*]Used narrower tables for Netscape 4.x, but spoilt the appearance for all the better browsers. (So I really don't want to start on this browser detection/script/multiple version lark — it shouldn't be necessary!)[*]Tried CSS divs and positioning, but current inconsistencies in interpretation might have thrown a spanner in the works.[*]Made everything a fixed width, but that wasn't what I wanted![/list]

And, if it wasn't for N4.x's problems with 100% table widths and failure to interpret relative (and often absolute!) URLs correctly for CSS, I could have been home and dry...

Which brings me to the real point of the question (even if anyone's got any crafty solutions I've missed), which is:

How long do we go on fudging things for some outdated but inexplicably still popular browsers like you know what? Do we just bite the bullet and forget about them (as some have done), or do we start including sensible, but potentially offputting, warnings like 'if you're still stuck with Netscape 4.x and this page looks crap, it's time to get a decent browser'?



Peter</p>



Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>